


Lost in a Dark Place

by bees_stories



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Broken Families, Case Fic, Community: evilsam_spn, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, International Fanworks Day 2015, Protective Older Brothers, Season/Series 06, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-13
Updated: 2015-02-13
Packaged: 2018-03-12 05:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3344822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bees_stories/pseuds/bees_stories
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean decides that he and Sam need a little alone time to hash things out, but nothing works out quite the way it's meant to. When they're forced into working a haunted house case by the ghost of the kid doing the haunting, it only reinforces Dean's belief that something isn't quite right with Sam. </p><p>Casefic. Set during Season 6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in a Dark Place

***

"I know you're not completely on board the vacation train, Sam, but it's for the best."

_I don't care if you want to go on this trip or not. I say we're going, so we're going._

Sam corrects Dean's words in his head. He hears them in their dad's voice and it resonates with a hundred memories of being forced to go to places he had no desire to go. But Dean's right. He's not all that interested. If they were headed for someplace like Vegas then he might feel different. A week of gambling and hookers would be a good way to burn off some of the restless energy that always seems to be simmering just beneath his skin. 

Unfortunately, Dean wants to _bond_ , or so he says. Which means they can look forward to a week full of awkward conversations and more awkward silences. Sam glances out the window and wonders how badly it will hurt if he hurls himself out of the car and onto the motorway. _Too much_ he decides. Instead he watches Detroit recede into the distance as he tries to ignore the edgy feeling. 

In the rear view mirror the skyscrapers become a gray, shapeless, monolith and then they disappear entirely as Dean starts in about what they really need is a little off the clock time to get used to the people they've become so that they can work better as a team.

In his head, Sam starts to count; _one, two, three_. He knows that Dean is trying, but it doesn't make his caring big brother act any less irritating. If he'd really cared, instead of fucking off to the suburbs, he would have stormed the gates of Hell. 

_Build a bridge and get over it, Dean,_ Sam thinks as he shuts his eyes and feigns sleep. _Your guilt is boring me._

Dean takes the hint and finally he shuts up. He's probably more than a little bit relieved that he's been let off the hook. He doesn't do _feelings_ at the best of time, and that's not a label that can be put on their current situation. He turns on the radio and tunes around. The only thing that comes in clearly is a sweet-voiced girl singer. Her voice is the last thing Sam hears before he drops off for real.

***

Dean glances over at Sam for about the hundredth time. He's asleep, out cold, for real this time, although he wasn't ten minutes earlier. Then, he'd been pretending, snuffling and snorting, laying it on thick. Too thick. It's one more thing they'll have to talk about later. It's one thing if he's the mark in Sam's con, but if Sam ever needs to pull the routine off in a life or death situation, he's going to have to do better.

He knows the man sitting next to him isn't a demon or a shifter. He's done the tests and they've come back clean. But something deep in his gut tells him that something isn't right. He can tell, even though Sam denies it, and Cas says he doesn't feel anything hinky either. But Cas isn't human, and he's not a Winchester. He doesn't share Sam's blood and bone. And Sam could be in denial about what his time downstairs has done to him. Or maybe he does know and he's fronting as he gets a handle on it. Until he knows for sure which is the real story, Dean's going to keep a sharp eye out. It's his job to protect his little brother. He'd failed for a time, but now he's got a chance to make things right.

***

Dean uses a new credit card with yet another fake name on it to pay for the cottage. He watches Sam out of the corner of his eye, and notices how relaxed he is as they deal with the paperwork.

"What?" Sam says as they roll down a stretch of lakeside frontage road. 

Dean shrugs. "Nothing. It's just we're not on a job and I used a fake card. Before you went downstairs you used to reach for your wallet and try and pay with cash."

"Your point?" Sam huffs out a sigh. He shrugs. "Look, I finally get it, okay? Yeah, the grifting and the fraud used to bug me. It doesn't anymore. We perform a service. Even if the people around us don't know it. And we don't get paid. So our using bogus cards and stuff, it's like a tax. A monster tax. They pay it, and some day maybe they'll get to benefit when we come back to clean up a situation." 

It's twisted logic, but it's the logic that Dean was raised with, and it was the logic he'd been trying to get Sam to accept since he was old enough to wonder why Dad made them use so many different names. It just sounds strange coming out of Sam's mouth. "You've gotten less idealistic while you were away, Sammy." 

Sam shrugs. "I guess going to Hell will do that to you."

Dean nods back. It's as good an explanation as any, but it still provokes the uneasy feeling in his gut.

***

When they finally arrive at the cottage, Sam decides he needs to throw Dean a bone. The place is neat and trim. A little worn around the edges from being buffeted by the wind blowing in off the lake, but nice all the same. It has its own private beach and an overgrown yard in the back. Inside, there are personal touches everywhere he looks. The owner of the cottage has tried to make their guests feel as if they've arrived at a home away from home.

It beats the hell out of the constant string of faceless hotels and motor courts and Grandpa Campbell's compound, so he gives Dean an approving smile. "This is great." 

"It's chilly in here," Dean says. He rubs his right palm over his left arm as if he's genuinely cold. "I'll build a fire." 

"Yeah, okay." Sam carries the box of supplies they've picked up at the local market into the kitchen. He considers the six pack of beer, but knows that Dean is trying to cut back again, so he puts some coffee on instead and then makes a couple of sandwiches and opens a bag of chips to go with it. 

When he returns to the living room, the chill is well on its way to being banished outside to join the fog rolling in off the lake. Soon the living room, with all its mounted fishing trophies and paint by numbers pictures, is downright cozy. 

"Good sandwich," Dean says. He raises his coffee cup in a salute. 

Belatedly, Sam does the same. He knows Dean is watching him. He knows his brother is worried. But then again, with Dean, worrying is practically a congenital condition. He ignores the concerned glances and picks a topic at random. 

"So, Lisa. That's a sweet set up."

Dean frowns. "What'd you mean?"

Sam shrugs as if it's obvious. It is to him. "No strings booty call? Best of both worlds. You still get to hunt and then when we've got down time, you've got a place to crash, any time you want it." 

The frown deepens for a couple of seconds and then Dean makes a conscious effort to smooth out his face. He picks up his coffee cup and drains it. "It's not like that." 

Although what it _is_ like clearly isn't a topic for discussion. 

The atmosphere gets tense. Sam looks at his watch. "I'm gonna get in a run before it gets dark." 

Dean makes a whatever sort of shrug, his shoulders lifting and falling as if his thoughts have shifted somewhere else. "Yeah. Okay." He looks up abruptly. "Sammy, don't get lost in the fog." 

Hitting the beach and listening to his footfalls against the sand is a welcome relief. Sam has had his fill of concerned looks and the twisting of Dean's mouth that means he's trying to work his way up to having another meaningful conversation. He puts thoughts of Dean aside and concentrates on timing his breathing. He drops his head, and pumps his arms harder, covering mile after mile as the world turns into an indistinct blur.

***

Mickey watches the two men quietly. He pretends he's a secret agent and they are the people he needs to gather information on, because that's more fun then how things really are. In reality, he's a kid, and he's lonely, because most of the time the house is empty and there's no one to play with.

He got excited when the car pulled up. It was a neat car. A classic. He used to have a Hot Wheel just like it, until his mom packed up all his stuff and took it away. He missed that Hot Wheel. He missed his mom. And his dad. He didn't really like the parade of strangers that came to the house, unless they brought kids. Even then, not all the kids were friendly. Some were scared of him. They screamed when he tried to play with them. Sometimes they got their parents to take them home before they unpacked all their stuff.

After a while, he figures out the two men are brothers. The really tall one, Sam, is cold in the middle. He smiles and laughs, but he's play acting. The other brother, Dean, is putting on an act too. He pretends to be happy, glad that he's come to the cottage to relax, but he's frowning on the inside. He's worried about his brother. 

Mickey wishes that he had someone like Dean to worry about him.

***

Dean watches as Sam bails out for another one of his cross country runs. He knows Sam is avoiding him, but this time he decides to use the opportunity. He goes up to Sam's room and lets himself in, carefully looking for any threads in the doorjamb or other traps that Sam might have left against his prying.

He tosses Sam's bags, quickly but thoroughly, searching through them for clues to what might be going on in his brother's head. He doesn't have any clear idea of what he's looking for, just the gut feeling that he'll know whatever it is when he sees it. 

Sam's porn stash raises his eyebrows. Dean flips through an issue of _Bondage Babes_ frowning at the explicit photos. The girls are exposed and vulnerable. They're tied up with all sorts of ropes and chains, splayed out on steel frames and suspended from harnesses. Not one of them is smiling. 

He puts the magazine back and buttons everything up, leaving the room exactly as he found it. When Sam finally comes back, more than two hours later, he can't help the look of concern that he knows is plastered all over his face. He blanks it quickly, but not quickly enough.

Sam notices. "I'm not a case, Dean, stop treating me like one." He blots his face with the back of his hand and goes upstairs to shower, effectively ending the conversation. 

Dean thinks of the bondage magazines. And of Sam's new found pragmatism. There's no good way to start a conversation that starts with admitting that he went through his brother's private stuff, so he digs out a picture of him and Sam as kids and stares at it instead, wondering what happened to the Sam he knew.

***

Mickey follows Dean around the house. He pretends he's Doctor John Watson and that Dean is Sherlock Holmes, like in his mom's favorite videotapes, because as soon as Sam leaves it's pretty obvious that Dean is looking for clues and Sam is at the root of the mystery.

They go through all the stuff in Sam's room. Dean finds some magazines and when he flips through them his face goes from big eyed with surprise to frowny. He shakes his head a lot and says a lot of bad words before putting everything away carefully. 

Mickey wants to says some bad words too when he sees what's in Sam's bag. There's guns and crosses and weird looking books. Dean isn't at all surprised to see that stuff. He treats it like that's totally normal. Mickey puts what's in the bags together with a conversation he'd overheard earlier about a shapeshifter. His eyes get wide because he works out that Sam and Dean are for real monster hunters. 

He gets an idea. All of the other people he's tried to get to help him got scared. But if Sam and Dean fight monsters then maybe they'll be different. If they fight monsters then they have to be brave. He follows Dean around some more as he works out the best way to introduce himself.

***

"Sam!" Dean calls from the living room. "Have you seen my multi-wrench?"

Dean's being Dean. He might break into a place or pay for it with a bogus credit card, but he always does what he can (unless someone dies messily and they have to make a quick get away) to leave it in better repair than when they got there. 

Currently, he's got his home improvement radar fixed on the downstairs bathroom sink. It's leaking. Not a big deal, just an occasional drip. But even a little drip is enough to get his Tim Taylor on, so he'd retrieved the tool box he keeps in the trunk next to the spare ammo and the bag of salt. 

Sam looks around the kitchen. He sees the wrench sitting on the counter and frowns. He could have sworn that it hadn't been there a minute ago when he'd reached for the last of the plates and put them away. 

"Yeah, you left it in here." He carries the wrench into the living room, meeting Dean half way. Dean takes the wrench, but he looks at it with a glare of deep suspicion. 

"I swear to God, Sam, this wrench was sitting on the bathroom counter not two minutes ago." 

Sam shrugs. "Yeah, well, don't look at me. I wasn't anywhere near the downstairs bathroom or your tools." He glances up sharply and holds up a hand against Dean's protest. There's a sound, very soft, like a snatch of music. "Did you hear that?" 

Dean looks around the room. His expression draws down in concentration. "Here what, Sam?"

Sam searches his memory. He finally puts a name to the nearly subliminal tune. " _Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush_?" he says, uncertain that he'd really heard anything at all. Sometimes, usually when he's about to drop off to sleep, he hears a faintly mocking voice whispering indistinctly. This one, the one he'd caught a fragment of its singing, was high and piping and childish. 

Dean shakes his head. "I didn't hear anything." The way he says it suggests strongly that neither did Sam.

***

Mickey is sure that moving the wrench and singing caught Sam and Dean's attention, but for some reason, they're ignoring him. Maybe it's because they're on vacation and hunting monsters is their job, and they don't want to work. Mickey understands that. His dad didn't like it when sometimes he had to bring his work home with him.

But this is _important_. At least it is to him. He watches the brothers some more and decides that Dean is the boss of them. He's the one who needs to be convinced.

***

Not that the incident with the wrench and the phantom voice mean anything, except maybe they're jumping at shadows, but Dean takes steps anyway. He gets out his EMF meter, although he resists the urge to turn it on. He also gets out the bag containing the sawn-off shotguns and salt loads, and a flask of holy water.

Sam cleans the shotguns, mostly to pass the time, and then he takes a canister of salt upstairs and draws a line across his threshold. Dean frowns at that, but maybe he's trying to keep his porn stash from getting the same treatment as the plumbing tools. Having one of his magazines show up on the coffee table would definite provoke a conversation that neither of them is ready to have. 

It might be a good call on his part. The EMF meter, which Dean definitely remembered leaving on the kitchen table, ends up on his pillow. And when he wakes up the next morning, the stuff in his wallet is spread all over the house. The persistent chill, which he'd at first put down to a faulty central heating system, takes on a new significance. 

"Somebody's trying to get our attention, Sammy," he says as he puts his driver's license away. 

Sam frowns. "We're off the clock. As long as they don't start throwing the dishes around, does it matter?" 

Dean doesn't have a decent answer for that. He makes another search of the house because his photographs are still missing.

***

Mickey is pleased with himself. Moving the funny box and taking Dean's wallet had finally sparked some interest. He'd watched Dean pick up and put down the box with all the lights on it at least a dozen times. He'd seen his Dad do that with the phone on the fax machine when he was trying to resist the urge to call into his office.

He always gave in ... 

eventually.

***

The fourth night, after the lights goes out, Sam hears the sound of giggling. With no alternative but to accept the obvious; the ghost really is trying to get their attention, they investigate. The EMF meter goes off like a banshee wailing, but there's nothing else to see.

They call it a night and retreat to their separate rooms. After a restless hour of tossing and turning, Dean gets up to go check on the house. He goes to Sam's room and puts his ear against the door. He hears the sound of heavy breathing. _Very_ heavy breathing. 

Dean shuts his eyes, using a liberal dose of brain bleach against an onslaught of graphic imagery. Quietly, he backs off and goes to check out the rest of the house.

***

The next day is clammy and overcast. There's a thick fog outside that makes it hard to see anything clearly. The brothers are in a bad mood. Mickey knows it's partly because of him, Dean had been especially mad because he didn't like looking all over the house for the stuff in his wallet. But there's a weird tension hanging between the two brothers. Mickey remembers his parents being like that sometimes, when they were mad at each other but they didn't want to fight in front of him.

He feels very frustrated and tries to get the brothers to focus, opening and slamming the closet doors upstairs, but they ignore him. With nothing better to do, even though it's foggy and spooky out, Mickey goes outside to play. He likes the big apple tree in the orchard. It's probably his most favorite place ever. He keeps his toys there, the ones that his mom had missed when she'd packed all the boxes. 

He sits in the tree and hugs Captain Bear and looks at the pictures he'd taken out of Dean's wallet. There's a pretty cool one of the Impala and a couple of others of smiling people with serious eyes. But the one that Mickey likes best, and the one he decides to keep, at least for a little while, is that of two little boys, one hugging the other. It makes him feel safe just looking at it, and he wishes he'd had a big brother to be as protective over him as the bigger of the pair looked to be. Maybe if he'd had a big brother then the bad thing wouldn't have happened.

***

Dean stares moodily out the kitchen window, lost in his thoughts. Without warning, he drops the sandwich he's not eating into the sink and he bolts outside.

Sam watches with mild interest and drinks beer as Dean darts between the trunks of the old fruit trees, face turned upward to peer at the denuded branches. He goes as far as climbing the biggest of the apple trees, surveying what he can through the mist. After about twenty minutes he comes back inside. 

"There was a kid out there. I swear I saw a kid. He had blond hair. And I found this." He holds up a teddy bear. It bears all the markings of a much loved toy; its blue tee-shirt has been mended, and whoever did the sewing had appliqued a tiny nautical anchor over the repair to conceal it. 

Sam takes the bear because Dean is pushing it onto him to study. Some family came here on vacation and their kid forgot his toy. He probably cried until his parents stopped somewhere along the way and bought him a new distraction.

Not like his dad. If Sam had left a toy behind in one of their fleabag motels, it would have been, 'Too bad, so sad, Sammy. Next time take better care of your stuff.' He's about to comment that Dean's making a mountain out of a mole hill when from above their heads that high, piping voice starts singing _Row Row Row Your Boat_. 

Sam has to concede that maybe the ghost is yanking their chains as Dean bolts upstairs towards the source of the singing.

***

Playing hide and seek with Dean is the most fun that Mickey has had in ages. At least since the little twin girls Molly and Aimee had come and stayed at the cottage for an entire month and their parents hadn't minded that they'd made an invisible friend.

He teases Dean at first, to get his interest, and then when Dean finds Captain Bear, Mickey races inside and upstairs. He sings _Row Row Row Your Boat_ at the top of his lungs as he fills the bathtub.

***

Dean is pissed when he comes downstairs. He turns a face full of thunderclouds on Sam. "Look what I found floating in the bathtub." He thrusts a scale model of a rigged sailing ship at Sam. "All I wanted was a couple of quiet days, Sammy. Is that really too much to ask?"

Sam does his best not to roll his eyes, but who does Dean think he's kidding? They're the Winchesters, lightning rods for every supernatural creature everywhere, including Heaven _and_ Hell. If Dean doesn't like it then he should find somewhere a hell of a lot more remote than the suburbs and hole up permanently.

But the truth is, despite his griping, Dean gets off on the life. He gets off on the failures as much as the successes, because they give him more reasons to beat himself up now that their dad's not around to do it for him. He'd never admit it, but when it comes down to it, Dean is a closet masochist. He's never happier than when he's miserable, otherwise he would have eaten his gun years ago. 

"Uh, no!" Sam replies as he hauls himself back into the moment and away from his character analysis of Dean. "Not at all. But if the place is haunted then we've got two choices: we pack up and leave the ghost in peace or we do our jobs." He looks at Dean, knowing it's going to be his brother's call. "So what's it gonna be?"

Dean exhales a harsh breath. "Damn it, just a couple of days," he mutters again. "Fine. Kiddy songs. Hide and seek in the apple orchard. The toy sailboat and the bear. Our ghost is a kid. But whose kid? I haven't seen a family cemetery around the place, have you?" 

Sam shakes his head 'no'. "But I haven't looked for one, either." 

"Yeah, okay," Dean says with a heavy sigh. "Let's go see what we can see, and then go from there."

***

Mickey claps his hands and dances with Captain Bear when the Impala pulls out of the driveway. Finally, the two brothers are on the case. It's only a matter of time before they find him.

But then he remembers something Sam said, about burning his bones. Mickey wasn't sure he liked the sound of that until Dean had said that it would bring him peace. 

Mickey decides that Dean meant 'heavenly peace' like in the Christmas song, and he figures that's a good thing. If he can't have his mom and dad then heavenly peace might be the next best thing.

***

There's no cemetery on the property. That would have made situation too simple. Their next option is research, but the cottage is remote, and it doesn't have functioning internet access. They head into town and find the local library, which also doubles as the historical society.

"So, what?" Sam asks. "Standard procedure?" 

Dean nods. "We've got a Johnny Doe. So let's start with the cottage and work backwards through its history." 

They park themselves in adjacent carrels and start scanning microfiche records, looking for clues in old newspapers and property records.

"Here's something," Sam says. "The cottage has been up for sale the entire time it was a rental property, about ten years now. There've been a couple of lease-to-own tenants, but no sales. Before that, the previous owners, a family named West, sold up and moved away from the area."

Dean nods and feeds a fresh spool into his reader. "Check this out," he says a few minutes later. "The West's had a kid. A boy named Mickey." He gives Sam a significant look. "He died." 

"Yeah?" Sam looks up from his own reader and rubs his tired eyes. "And?"

"Damn. The kid drowned." Dean leans back in his chair and stretches a kink out of his shoulder. "No body." 

He requests copies of the relevant microfiche records from the lady at the desk. It's clear he's brooding, and Sam doesn't have to work hard to figure out why. 

No body. No grave. Nothing to salt and burn. Unless they do the toys, which are the only concrete link they've discovered that could be holding the kid to the earth. 

Dean reads Sam's mind. "Oh, no, Sammy. Not the bear." 

Sam shrugs. He doesn't really care one way or the other. What he really wants to do is go find himself a beer and get laid.

***

A big storm rolls in off the lake. Mickey hates the crash and boom of the thunder. It reminds him of what happened on the bad day. He hides upstairs in his bedroom closet and won't come down, even when he hears Dean singing silly songs and Sam joining in. He holds the photo of the two brothers and pretends that it's him who is being held protectively.

***

It storms like a sonofabitch for the next two days. Heavy sheets of rain, driven by winds off the lake, pelt against the windows like they're fighting to get inside. Lightning sparks and crackles, turning the sky bright white when it's not the color of slate.

The perfect vacation. 

Sam does pushups and crunches by the score while Dean does what he can to gain the confidence of Mickey West, the dead kid. He gets down on the floor and plays with the toy sailboat and the teddy bear. He looks absurd, sitting there with his beer in one hand as he sets the boat afloat on an imaginary sea. Sam remembers Dean doing similar things for him. Trying to give him moments of normality to balance out the weirdness that made up the bulk of their lives. He cracks a smile as Dean invites him to get in on the game. 

For a little while, Sam doesn't have to pretend he's having fun as Dean breaks into a truly awful rendition of _On Top of SpaghettiOs_ and without meaning to, he finds himself joining in.

***

Finally, the rain passes. With a relieved sigh, Mickey goes downstairs. He sees Captain Bear and the _Bounding Dolphin_ on the table near the fireplace, and then he goes into the kitchen.

Dean has been drawing with a marker. He's left his pictures on the refrigerator, using pieces of gray tape to hold them on. There's a drawing of the house and the area around it. It's better than what Mickey could have done, and he admires the accuracy of it as he looks at all the landmarks that are named. 'big rock', 'sand plum shrubs',"orchard', 'place where the swing was', and the cottage with all the different rooms named. 

It's like a treasure map. 

And his bones must be the treasure. 

The only problem is Mickey can't remember exactly where he'd left his bones. He'd been playing outside when the bad thing happens, he knows that much. But there's a blank place in his memory and even though he's tried, he can't fill it in. But he knows how he feels when he thinks about the bad thing, so he takes up the marker and very carefully, in his best block printing, he writes on Dean's map. 

_It's cold and dark. I don't like it here._

***

Dean has drawn a crude map of the cottage and its surroundings and taped it at kid height on the refrigerator. He writes 'We are here' and makes a red circle around the cartoon cottage.

When Sam returns from his run late the next morning, he notices that the map has been written on.

"Dean!" Sam calls. "Get in here. Now!" 

Dean hauls ass down the stairs. He's not entirely awake, but that changes in a hurry as he sees Mickey's message. He drops to his knees and traces the childish handwriting. "Where are you, Mickey?" he asks softly.

Sam frowns at his brother. For such a hard case he's really got a soft spot for kids. Losing the shifter baby had really gotten him down. Now he's practically obsessed with Mickey West. 

Something about the note strikes Sam as off. He frowns and snatches it out of Dean's hand. "If you were a kid and you'd drowned, wouldn't you say something about the water?"

Dean frowns as he tries to follow along. "What'd you mean, Sammy?" 

Sam shrugs. He tries to articulate what he's thinking, but since he stopped being a kid, he no longer really relates to them. "Like, the fish aren't as fun as Nemo. Or something about the water making it hard to breathe. I don't know." 

Dean's frustration is contagious. They're not seeing the right pieces of the puzzle. "Something besides it's cold and dark. That sounds like what you'd say if you were stuck in a mine shaft or down an abandoned well." 

Dean's eyes widen as he gets it. He clambers to his feet and races into the other room. There's a set of maps of the area and a blueprint of the cottage they'd boosted when they were on their research mission. "Hang on!" He traces a finger over the map. When he looks up his face is triumphant. "Found it!"

"Found what?" Sam can't see the map from where he's standing.

"Where was the first place I saw Mickey's ghost?" Dean asks.

Sam shrugs. "Saw it? The orchard."

"The orchard," Dean says as if it's obvious. "What if Mickey got bored playing on the beach, so he ducked out on his folks and went to go play in the orchard instead? He falls in this abandoned cistern, here. The one that's part of the old drainage system." He stabs down on the blueprint with a fingertip. "And because the last place he was seen was the beach, everyone thinks he's drowned. The cistern out in the orchard. I'll bet you that's where Mickey is. Cold and alone and in the dark."

***

They shuffle around in a lot of tall, wet, dead grass until their jeans are soaked through. Dean's discouraged. He'd been positive that they'd cracked the mystery. But it turns out the cistern had a heavy iron grating covering it that no kid could move, and the orchard is full of culverts, and drainpipes, and old, covered up springs. The sun has nearly gone. It's cold, and Sam's bored. They're on the verge of giving up for the night when Dean stumbles over a rise in the earth. He catches himself and then he switches on his flashlight and trains it on the ground.

"Sonofabitch," he says softly. "Look at that, Sam." 

The rise that Dean had tripped over was the lip of an exposed cement pipe. If he'd taken a slightly longer step he'd have gone in. It's located in just the sort of a semi-remote spot that would have lured an inquisitive six year old. "He could have gone down head first, looking for frogs or something, and gotten himself stuck," Sam says as he drops to squat next to Dean. 

Dean shakes his head, but he can't disagree with Sam's analysis. "Damn, Mickey, you dumb kid," he says mournfully. "You should have stayed where your mom and dad could have kept an eye on you." He sighs and then he gets down on his belly, reaching deep into the pipe. When he gets up again there's a rib bone in his hand.

"So that's that. I'll go get the salt and the kerosene," Sam says. If they're going to put the kid to rest then there's no point in moving his bones. 

Dean hauls himself up just far enough to reply. "This poor kid has been down in the cold and dark long enough, Sam. We're gonna give him one more look at the place he liked best before we send him on." He leans in again and pulls out a femur. "Now go get the tarp so we can do this right." 

There's no point in arguing when Dean's feeling sentimental. Sam gets the tarp as requested and then he goes back to the cottage for the fireplace tongs. They've got a long handle and they'll make pulling things up from the narrow space a hell of a lot easier. 

It takes forever. The recovery process is tedious, and because he has the longer reach, Sam gets to do most of it. Dean counts and recounts until he's certain they have found all the bones, and then he wraps the skeleton up reverently and carries it to the old apple tree. "Here. But not yet. There's something else I want to get first." He goes back into the cottage, and when he comes out he's got Mickey's sailboat and his teddy bear. "A kid should have his stuff, right, Sam?"

"Yeah, sure." Sam wonders just how much of this is really about Mickey as Dean places the toys on top of the bundle of bones.

***

Mickey watches with wide-eyed fascination as Sam and Dean work together to rebuild his skeleton. There's so many bones, and some of them are so little that, even though it scares him, he goes down into the pipe and helps Sam gather them up.

"You found me!" he tugs on Dean's jacket and on the hem of Sam's shirt, but they don't seem to notice, both brothers are too caught up in their work.

Finally, Dean wraps everything up very carefully in a canvas tarp. Mickey feels the pull of his bones, and knows he should join them, but there's one more thing he has to do first. He takes the picture of Sam and Dean as little boys and very carefully tucks it back into Dean's jacket pocket.

***

Dean swallows hard and then pours salt and kerosene over everything. "There you go, kid. I'm sorry people didn't do better by you."

He gives Sam a meaningful look. And now he knows for certain that all of this wasn't just about Mickey West. 

Firelight turns the night sky orange. For a brief moment Mickey appears, holding his sailboat tucked under one hand and clutching the teddy bear in the other one. He smiles at them both, points at his front hip and then at Dean, like he should look in his pocket, and then finally he waves goodbye. He disappears as his bones burst, sending up a shower of sparks. 

Dean frowns, and then he checks his pocket. He pulls out a photograph and stares at it in surprised disbelief before he shove it away again and returns his gaze to the pyre. Sam knows he should say something. He clasps Dean's shoulder and gives it a squeeze. "You did good work in there." 

Dean shakes his head. "No. _We_ did good work, Sam. I might have drawn him out, but that was smart thinking the way you got inside Mickey's head. I'm proud of you." 

It's a good moment. One Sam knows he should build on if he wants Dean stop worrying and back off, but after all of the picking and needling of the past weeks he's tongue-tied by the praise. "Just doing my job," he manages at last.

Dean gives him one of those looks. The type that means he's getting ready to launch into another of his concerned brother routines. Sam's not in the mood to hear it. But suddenly he makes a connection between himself and the dead kid, and the picture that had gone missing, now returned, and he decides he needs to get something straight once and for all.

"Look, Dean, I get it. You think I've changed. Hell, I know I have. But I'm not a case for you to investigate. I'm not lost, like that kid Mickey was. I'm right here. And trust me when I tell you, I'm good." He glances up at a night sky that promises more rain. "It's cold out here. I'm going inside." 

He feels eyes on his neck all the way back to the house.

***

Dean watches Sam go. Once again, he feels vaguely unsettled. This was a kid they'd helped and yet, except for when Sam was caught up in the mystery, he'd been disengaged, like he couldn't care either way if Mickey West crossed over or lingered on long enough to morph from Casper the Friendly Ghost into a vengeful spirit. It wasn't like him. It wasn't like him at all. The old Sam, the Sam he knew, gave a damn about the innocent.

He takes the picture out of his pocket again. The one a ghost kid had swiped for a time and then returned. He stares down at the little boy versions of Sam and himself. "Something happened to you, Sammy," Dean says softly, even though no one is around to hear. "And I'm not gonna rest until I know what. And then, when I do find out, I'm gonna fix you. Better than new." 

They're brave words, but Dean can't help himself. Sam is his brother. And protecting his brother is what he's meant to do best.

end


End file.
